Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 63
  2. Goodwill Plus
     … The Buddha says you can make it a basis for concentration, what they call the immeasurable concentrations, where you’re focused less on the body and more on the whole world, thinking of goodwill in all directions. The image the Buddha gives is of a man blowing a conch trumpet. As soon as he blows it, the sound goes in all directions at once … 
  3. Stay Centered
     … Sāriputta and his practice of concentration: how he could parse out all the different mental factors that went into his concentration. And neither of them were just showing off. They weren’t just trying to make the list long. The whole purpose there is to see very clearly what individual events there are in the mind, so that you can see where your craving … 
  4. Determined on Awakening
     … All the aspects of the path that we follow—virtue, concentration, discernment, all the qualities of mind we try to develop, the ways we live, trying to be modest, trying to be content, trying to find some seclusion, being unentangled: All of these are expressions of those four determinations. All of them advance those four determinations. So the Buddha is basically asking you to … 
  5. Lessons of Right Resolve
     … There’s a very clear connection between right resolve and right concentration. After all, what is concentration? The mind is firmly set on one object. And how does it get set there? Through your intentions. You have to motivate yourself to do this; the mind doesn’t just come to concentration in a stable way. It can, every now and then, fall into concentration … 
  6. Conserving Your Strength
     … This is why we work on concentration to build up strength of the mind. The Buddha compares concentration to food for the mind. In other places, he compares it to a home for the mind—in other words, a place where you can rest, gather your strength, and nourish the mind. But simply having strength is not enough. You have to learn how to … 
  7. The World Is Aflame
     … You use, not sensual pleasure, but the pleasure of a mind that’s concentrated. And so it’s not a middle path of a middling sort of pleasure, or a middling sort of pain. Actually, the pleasure that comes from concentration can be very intense. But even this is a burning pleasure. After all, the verb for doing jhana, jhayati, also means burning. But … 
  8. The Dangers of Sensuality
     … In the same way, once you get into concentration, you find that it’s a fairly steady pleasure there. Learn to enjoy that. Learn to appreciate that. It’s a floor below which you don’t want to fall. Now, someday you’ll find that, even in the concentration, there are ups and downs. But first learn how to appreciate the steadiness you can … 
  9. Adjust the Flame
     … I remember reading a piece by a monk, of all people, saying that you shouldn’t do concentration practice, because concentration practice is focused on one object, and it’s an attachment to that one object. Instead, you should let the mind wander around from object to object, and just note where it’s going. But that wandering around is clinging, too: serial clinging … 
  10. Collecting Your Tools
     … And don’t worry about getting stuck on concentration. That’s the kind of thing you can get unstuck from pretty easily. It’s a lot harder to get unstuck from your ideas. Often, things come up in the course of your concentration. Because as the mind centers in on the present moment, your sense of your body changes, your sense of your mind … 
  11. The Carpenter’s Adze
     … You want to steady the mind—make it more concentrated—or gladden the mind. How do you do that? You deal with mental fabrication. You look at your perceptions, you look at your feelings, and ask yourself, “Which ones can I change so that the mind does become more and more glad to be here, more and more steady, more and more concentrated?” So … 
  12. Cleanliness is Next to Mindfulness
     … The texts talk about these four bases of success specifically in conjunction with concentration, but a common teaching all over Thailand is that if you want to succeed at anything, you’ve got to develop these qualities of mind and apply them to whatever you have to do to succeed. And regardless of what areas of your life you develop them in, you can … 
  13. The Food of Feelings
     … That, in particular, is what the practice of concentration is about. In the various analogies given in the Canon for the different aspects of the path, concentration often shows up in the role of food. Good food at that. Sugar, honey, molasses, butter: things that taste good and are good for you. So this is one of the things we have to work on … 
  14. Big Desire, Detailed Focus
     … When you have these three qualities working together—mindfulness, alertness, and ardency—that’s how you get the mind into concentration. It’s also how you use the concentration to understand what’s going on inside. But the results don’t stay just inside. They spread out in all directions. And they take the mind to a place where it’s beyond all directions … 
  15. No Happiness Other than Peace
     … But concentration is not the goal, because there’s a certain amount of effort that has to go into keeping the mind concentrated. And it’s an acquired taste. Some people sit here and they’re miserable for a whole hour. What we’re learning is how to be here happily, how to create a sense of well-being here, so that we can … 
  16. Judging Your Thoughts by What They Do
     … The concentration gives you strength, keeps you grounded in the present. But remember: The present moment isn’t everything. The present moment has its own input—in other words, in terms of your intentions right now—but it’s also got things coming in from the past that are going to have an impact now and on into the future. You want to take … 
  17. Matters of Life & Death
     … This is what the concentration provides, which is why it’s not a waste of time when you do find pleasure in the concentration, that you learn how to maintain it. It’s a balancing act, learning how to stay there and not disturb it. It’s as if you find yourself floating, and it feels just right. There’s a weightlessness, a lightness … 
  18. Factors for Stream Entry
     … You’re trying to work on developing right concentration. Feed the mind with right concentration, so that when you look at the other ways you’ve been feeding it all along, you can begin to see: “This is an area that’s unskillful, and I’d be better off not feeding there. Not only would I be better off, but the people around me … 
  19. Understanding Through Developing
     … Make the best “me” that you can out of the desire for pleasure by getting the mind into concentration. You keep in the back of your mind, though, the fact that there’s something even better that will come from letting go when the concentration has done its work—the Buddha promises that. You finally get to the point where you realize that even … 
  20. Taking the Buddha at his Word
     … He was referring specifically to concentration practice, but his statement applies to other areas of the practice as well. When some people come to the practice, they want to be told what to do and they don’t want to have to think about it. They want a series of instructions that they can follow—1,2,3,4—and then at the end … 
  21. Delight in Persistence
     … If you feel that “It doesn’t make much difference whether my mind is concentrated or not, whether I understand my mind or not,” you’re not going to put in the effort. But if you see that it really does make a difference, that’s how you motivate yourself, that’s how you give rise to the desire. Then you stick with it … 
  22. Load next page...